My success story

So a year and a half ago this was me. I don't have any body shots because as you can see, I hid behind something in most of my pictures. https://i.imgur.com/M2X16eu.jpg I was your all around (emphasis on round) stereotypical "gamer". After work I would head home, pick up a bag of combos, cheetos, a big ol' soda etc. on the way and then plop down at my computer and eat my "snack". Then I would go out again after some time, grab more garbage to eat and plop down at my computer again and eat that for dinner. Rinse and repeat for my life. I wouldn't say I was happy by any means. But I was comfortable and saw no reason to change. But I can remember the EXACT moment that changed, as weird a moment as it was I was laying in bed watching The Flash, while eating a pint of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. And I was just thinking to myself "Damn. He is really thin. And happy. I wish I was that happy!...wish I was that thin.." And yeah as stupid as it is, I told myself I would get myself a scale the next day and get started on changing things. The next day I did just that. I went to the store in search of a scale. Honestly, it was one of the more scary/intimidating things I've done. Maybe scary isn't the right word, but I felt like I was being judged just being in that aisle looking at scales. It took me a 10-15 minutes to finally grab one and a couple more minutes to awkwardly make my way through a checkout line before I got in my car and headed to where I am now. How did I do it? Changed everything I ate. I knew if I tried going to the gym I would give it up and fail. So I looked into the basics of caloric management and went from there. Looked into TDEE, BMR etc and just kind of went from there. https://tinyurl.com/y8ocznrn this website was a huge help for me in the beginning and throughout. I started in small steps. One week cut back on soda to only one a day. Eventually cut down to only on the weekends. Then cut certain foods out of my diet, like noodles..then bread and so on. Then cut out most of the junk food to one or two cheat days a week (these are ESSENTIAL TO HAVE) Then cut back on calories entirely and so on and so on. Small steps, small accomplishments, all taken one day at a time to give myself that feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. This was me at about 210lbs. The first body shot in YEARS that I took https://i.imgur.com/QyREX9Y.jpg I was one of those "It runs in my genes. I'll just always be big" people. But not anymore. Now I have friends asking me for advice and family asking me to help them out. It's the best I've felt my entire life. It's a lot of work, but anything work having does't come easy. This is me as of this week https://i.imgur.com/m6Fu8pt.jpg Still sitting around playing videogames after work, but not gorging in the process. In fact, now that I have the diet down I will be starting to go to the gym tomorrow to bulk up a little bit. I've got a blank canvas to work with at this point (and a tad bit of extra skin in places). So why not make a masterpiece out of what I put so much time and effort into? Feel free to message me if you have any questions or just want some motivation. I know what you're going through and trust me, in the end it is worth every second. It's not a diet, it's not a few lifestyle changes, it's your entire life. You've got this.